Publishing and Publics

Discussing the realities of political journalism in 2026

Friday the thirteenth felt like a fitting day to gather a group of independent writers and editors for a discussion on the current state of political publishing. On February 13, Natasha Lennard, Intercept columnist and Associate Director for the New School for Social Research’s Creative Publishing and Critical Journalism (CPCJ) MA program joined Matt ...
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Publishing and Publics

Finding the Equator

A conversation on the failures of Western media after Gaza and a new cosmopolitan publication that answers the call for change

Suzy Hansen is an author and journalist whose work examines the blind spots of American liberalism and the failures of Western journalism. She is one of the founding editors of Equator, a new online publication created in the aftermath of October 7, 2023, to address censorship in liberal media coverage. ...
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Finding the Equator

“Things Happen”

Staging sovereignty

We have become accustomed to the Oval Office ritual by which Trump stages his pugnacious primacy. The protocol of the traditional press conference, in which the president stands and the press remains seated until recognized, is inverted. Trump sits as if enthroned on one of his gilded chairs, though not ...
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“Things Happen”

Palestinians in Their Own Words, Their Own Genres

A review of Gaza: The Story of a Genocide

With the release of Gaza: The Story of a Genocide (Verso, October 2025), editors Fatima Bhutto and Sonia Faleiro bring us a powerful addition to a lamentable literary genre: the genocide anthology. Comprising more than 20 works of poetry, art, essays, and reportage by 23 contributors—many of them Palestinian—this volume ...
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Palestinians in Their Own Words, Their Own Genres

On The Killing of Gaza: Reports on a Catastrophe

Israeli journalist Gideon Levy’s journey into his country’s heart of darkness

Gideon Levy, an award-winning journalist for the liberal Israeli English-language daily Haaretz, has been covering the Palestinian occupied territories since the late 1980s. His column, “Twilight Zone,” published during the Oslo process, was famously unsettling to many Israelis because he established, week after week, that the celebrated peace process was ...
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On <em>The Killing of Gaza: Reports on a Catastrophe</em>

Documenting the City of Refugees

An interview with Susan Hartman on her new book about Utica’s transformation by refugees

I wanted to put in perspective what these refugees had gone through, what the countries they left had gone through, what the refugee camp experience was like. So, there is this part where I talk about when they were each on the run: it is very traumatic material and this ...
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Documenting the City of Refugees

Watergate Summer

In 1973, Robert MacNeil and Jim Lehrer’s determination to broadcast a Congressional investigation mattered to our democracy, and revolutionized television news

In other words, alternative television showed government as it was, mainlining the excitement of democracy to a dedicated and growing group of political junkies. At the same time, seeing the investigation play out live provided reassurance that Watergate was a constitutional crisis but not, as Nixon characterized it, a plot ...
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Has the Press Corps Learned Nothing?

Journalism, when done right, should change a person

Members of the Washington press corps like to tell a story about the heroes of the Washington press corps “holding power to account.” This seems noble, and it can be, but more often than not, it’s not noble.  In practice, what “holding power to account” means is countering the dominance over ...
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Has the Press Corps Learned Nothing?

Andrew Cuomo’s Female Enablers

Powerful men have recruited successful women to shield and defend them for decades – but other feminists are seeing the bigger picture

_____ The scandals in the New York governor’s office have exploded. One sexual harassment allegation has become multiple allegations. The cover-up of nursing home deaths from Covid-19 is now prompting a broader inquiry into Andrew Cuomo’s handling of the pandemic. And all of these allegations have ripped back the curtain on ...
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Andrew Cuomo’s Female Enablers

Big Tech May Be Closer to Home Than You Know

How digital behemoths create economically vulnerable communities — and then prey on them

----- In May, 2020, the city of Gallatin, Tennessee, voted to provide nearly $20 million in tax breaks to an entity called “Project Woolhawk” that proposed building a data center in the area. Local economic development officials refused to confirm who or what was behind that name, only that it was ...
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Big Tech May Be Closer to Home Than You Know